Boswell's Life of Johnson

These selections from James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson,
LL.D. are for use in my classes. The text comes from R. W.
Chapman's 1904 Oxford edition; the page numbers correspond to
those in the Oxford World's Classic edition. I have removed all
footnotes, both those by Boswell and by other editors. Please
send comments and corrections to Jack
Lynch.

[Pages 43-97]

[1] The two years
which he spent at home, after his return from Stourbridge, he
passed in what he thought idleness, and was scolded by his
father for his want of steady application. He had no settled
plan of life, nor looked forward at all, but merely lived from
day to day. Yet he read a great deal in a desultory manner,
without any scheme of study, as chance threw books in his ways,
and inclination directed him through them. He used to mention
one curious instance of his casual reading, when but a boy.
Having imagined that his brother had hid some apples behind a
large folio upon an upper shelf in his father's shop, he climbed
up to search for them. There were no apples; but the large folio
proved to be Petrarch, whom he had seen mentioned, in some
preface, as one of the restorers of learning. His curiosity
having been thus excited, he sat down with avidity, and read a
great part of the book. What he read during these two years; he
told me, was not works of mere amusement, “not voyages and
travels, but all literature, Sir, all ancient writers, all
manly: though but little Greek, only some of Anacreon and
Hesiod: but in this irregular manner (added he) I had looked
into a great many books, which were not commonly known at the
Universities, where they seldom read any books but what are put
into their hands by their tutors; so that when I came to Oxford,
Dr. ADAMS, now master of Pembroke College, told
me, I was the best qualified for the University that he had ever
known come there.”

[2] In estimating
the progress of his mind during these two years, as well as in
future periods of his life, we must not regard his own hasty
confession of idleness; for we see, when he explains himself,
that he was acquiring various stores; and, indeed he himself
concluded the account, with saying, “I would not have you think
I was doing nothing then.” He might, perhaps, have studied more
assiduously; but it may be doubted, whether such a mind as his
was not more enriched by roaming at large in the fields of
literature, than if it had been confined to any single spot. The
analogy between body and mind is very general, and the parallel
will hold as to their food, as well as any other particular. The
flesh of animals who feed excursively, is allowed to have a
higher flavour than that of those who are cooped up. May there
not be the same difference between men who read as their taste
prompts, and men who are confined in cells and colleges to
stated tasks?

[3] That a man in
Mr. Michael Johnson's circumstances should think of sending his
son to the expensive University of Oxford, at his own charge,
seems very improbable. The subject was too delicate to question
Johnson upon; but I have been assured by Dr. Taylor, that the
scheme never would have taken place, had not a gentleman of
Shropshire, one of his school-fellows, spontaneously undertaken
to support him at Oxford, in the character of his companion:
though, in fact, he never received any assistance whatever from
that gentleman.

[4] He, however,
went to Oxford, and was entered a Commoner of Pembroke College,
on the 31st of October, 1728, being then in his nineteenth
year.

[5] The Reverend
Dr. ADAMS, who afterwards presided over Pembroke
College with universal esteem, told me he was present, and gave
me some account of what passed on the night of Johnson's arrival
at Oxford. On that evening, his father, who had anxiously
accompanied him, found means to have him introduced to Mr.
Jorden, who was to be his tutor. His being put under any tutor,
reminds us of what Wood says of Robert Burton, authour of the
“Anatomy of Melancholy,” when elected student of Christ Church;
“for form's sake, though he wanted not a tutor, he was
put under the tuition of Dr. John Bancroft, afterwards Bishop of
Oxon.”

[6] His father
seemed very full of the merits of his son, and told the company
he was a good scholar, and a poet, and wrote Latin verses. His
figure and manner appeared strange to them; but he behaved
modestly, and sat silent, till upon something which occurred in
the course of conversation, he suddenly struck in and quoted
Macrobius; and thus he gave the first impression of that more
extensive reading in which he had indulged himself.

[7] His tutor, Mr.
Jorden, fellow of Pembroke, was not, it seems, a man of such
abilities as we should conceive requisite for the instructor of
Samuel Johnson, who gave me the following account of him. “He
was a very worthy man, but a heavy man, and I did not profit
much by his instructions. Indeed, I did not attend him much. The
first day after I came to college, I waited upon him, and then
staid away four. On the sixth, Mr. Jorden asked me why I had not
attended. I answered, I had been sliding in Christ-Church
meadow. And this I said with as much nonchalance as I am
now talking to you. I had no notion that I was wrong or
irreverent to my tutor.” Boswell. “That, Sir, was
great fortitude of mind.” Johnson. “No, Sir,
stark insensibility.”

[8] The fifth of
November was at that time kept with great solemnity at Pembroke
College, and exercises upon the subject of the day were
required. Johnson neglected to perform his, which is much to be
regretted; for his vivacity of imagination, and force of
language, would probably have produced something sublime upon
the gunpowder plot. To apologise for his neglect, he gave in a
short copy of verses, intitled Somnium, containing a
common thought; “that the Muse had come to him in his sleep, and
whispered, that it did not become him to write on such subjects
as politicks; he should confine himself to humbler themes”: but
the versification was truly Virgilian.

[9] He had a love
and respect for Jorden, not for his literature, but for his
worth. “Whenever (said he) a young man becomes Jorden's pupil,
he becomes his son.”

[10] Having given
such a specimen of his poetical powers, he was asked by Mr.
Jorden, to translate Pope's Messiah into Latin verse, as a
Christmas exercise. He performed it with uncommon rapidity, and
in so masterly a manner, that he obtained great applause from
it, which ever after kept him high in the estimation of his
College, and, indeed, of all the University.

[11] It is said,
that Mr. Pope expressed himself concerning it in terms of strong
approbation. Dr. Taylor told me, that it was first printed for
old Mr. Johnson, without the knowledge of his son, who was very
angry when he heard of it. A Miscellany of Poems collected by a
person of the name of Husbands, was published at Oxford in
1731. In that Miscellany Johnson's translation of the Messiah
appeared, with this modest motto from Scaliger's Poeticks,
"Ex alieno ingenio Poeta, ex suo tantum versificator.”

[12] I am not
ignorant that critical objections have been made to this and
other specimens of Johnson's Latin Poetry. I acknowledge myself
not competent to decide on a question of such extreme nicety.
But I am satisfied with the just and discriminative eulogy
pronounced upon it by my friend Mr. Courtenay.

“And with like ease his vivid lines assume The garb and
dignity of ancient Rome.  Let college
verse-men trite conceits express, Trick'd out in
splendid shreds of Virgil's dress. From playful Ovid cull
the tinsel phrase, And vapid notions hitch in pilfer'd
lays; Then with mosaick art the piece combine, And boast
the glitter of each dulcet line: Johnson adventur'd boldly
to transfuse His vigorous sense into the Latin muse;
Aspir'd to shine by unreflected light, And with a Roman's
ardour think and write. He felt the tuneful Nine his
breast inspire, And, like a master, wak'd the soothing
lyre: Horatian strains a grateful heart proclaim, While
Sky's wild rocks resound his Thralia's name. 
Hesperia's plant, in some less skilful hands. To bloom a
while, factitious heat demands: Though glowing Maro a faint
warmth supplies, The sickly blossom in the hot-house
dies: By Johnson's genial culture, art, and toil, Its
root strikes deep, and owns the fost'ring soil; Imbibes our
sun through all its swelling veins, And grows a native of
Britannia's plains.”

[13] The “morbid
melancholy,” which was lurking in his constitution, and to which
we may ascribe those particularities, and that aversion to
regular life, which, at a very early period, marked his
character, gathered such strength in his twentieth year, as to
afflict him in a dreadful manner. While he was at Lichfield, in
the college vacation of the year 1729, he felt himself
overwhelmed with an horrible hypochondria, with perpetual
irritation, fretfulness, and impatience; and with a dejection,
gloom, and despair, which made existence misery. From this
dismal malady he never afterwards was perfectly relieved; and
all his labours, and all his enjoyments, were but temporary
interruptions of its baleful influence. How wonderful, how
unsearchable are the ways of God! Johnson, who was blest with
all the powers of genius and understanding in a degree far above
the ordinary state of human nature, was at the same time visited
with a disorder so afflictive, that they who know it by dire
experience, will not envy his exalted endowments. That it was,
in some degree, occasioned by a defect in his nervous system,
that inexplicable part of our frame, appears highly probable. He
told Mr. Paradise that he was sometimes so languid and
inefficient, that he could not distinguish the hour upon the
town-clock.

[14] Johnson, upon
the first violent attack of this disorder, strove to overcome it
by forcible exertions. He frequently walked to Birmingham and
back again, and tried many other expedients, but all in vain.
His expression concerning it to me was “I did not then know how
to manage it.” His distress became so intolerable, that he
applied to Dr. Swinfen, physician in Lichfield, his god-father,
and put into his hands a state of his case, written in Latin.
Dr. Swinfen was so much struck with the extraordinary acuteness,
research, and eloquence of this paper, that in his zeal for his
godson he shewed it to several people. His daughter, Mrs.
Desmoulins, who was many years humanely supported in Dr.
Johnson's house in London, told me, that upon his discovering
that Dr. Swinfen had communicated his case, he was so much
offended, that he was never afterwards fully reconciled to him.
He indeed had good reason to be offended; for though Dr.
Swinfen's motive was good, he inconsiderately betrayed a matter
deeply interesting and of great delicacy, which had been
entrusted to him in confidence: and exposed a complaint of his
young friend and patient, which, in the superficial opinion of
the generality of mankind, is attended with contempt and
disgrace.

[15] But let not
little men triumph upon knowing that Johnson was an
HYPOCHONDRIACK, was subject to what the learned,
philosophical, and pious Dr. Cheyne has so well treated under the
title of “The English Malady.” Though he suffered severely from
it, he was not therefore degraded. The powers of his great mind
might be troubled, and their full exercise suspended at times;
but the mind itself was ever entire. As a proof of this, it is
only necessary to consider, that, when he was at the very worst,
he composed that state of his own case, which shewed an uncommon
vigour, not only of fancy and taste, but of judgement. I am aware
that he himself was too ready to call such a complaint by the
name of madness; in conformity with which notion, he has
traced its gradations, with exquisite nicety, in one of the
chapters of his RASSELAS. But there is surely a
clear distinction between a disorder which affects only the
imagination and spirits, while the judgement is sound, and a
disorder by which the judgement itself is impaired. The
distinction was made to me by the late Professor Gaubius of
Leyden, physician to the Prince of Orange, in a conversation
which I had with him several years ago, and he explained it thus:
“If (said he) a man tells me that he is grievously disturbed, for
that he imagines he sees a ruffian coming against him with
a drawn sword, though at the same time he is conscious it
is a delusion, I pronounce him to have a disordered imagination;
but if a man tells me that he sees this, and in
consternation calls to me to look at it, I pronounce him to be
mad.”

[16] It is a common
effect of low spirits or melancholy, to make those who are
afflicted with it imagine that they are actually suffering those
evils which happen to be most strongly presented to their
minds. Some have fancied themselves to be deprived of the use
of their limbs, some to labour under acute diseases, others to
be in extreme poverty; when, in truth, there was not the least
reality in any of the suppositions; so that when the vapours
were dispelled, they were convinced of the delusion. To Johnson,
whose supreme enjoyment was the exercise of his reason, the
disturbance or obscuration of that faculty was the evil most to
be dreaded. Insanity, therefore, was the object of his most
dismal apprehension; and he fancied himself seized by it, or
approaching to it, at the very time when he was giving proofs of
a more than ordinary soundness and vigour of judgement. That his
own diseased imagination should have so far deceived him, is
strange; but it is stranger still that some of his friends
should have given credit to his groundless opinion, when they
had such undoubted proofs that it was totally fallacious; though
it is by no means surprising that those who wish to depreciate
him, should, since his death, have laid hold of this
circumstance, and insisted upon it with very unfair
aggravation.

[17] Amidst the
oppression and distraction of a disease which very few have felt
in its full extent, but many have experienced in a slighter
degree, Johnson, in his writings, and in his conversation, never
failed to display all the varieties of intellectual excellence.
In his march through this world to a better, his mind still
appeared grand and brilliant, and impressed all around him with
the truth of Virgil's noble sentiment 

"Igneus est ollis vigor et cælestis origo.”

[18] The history of
his mind as to religion is an important article. I have
mentioned the early impressions made upon his tender imagination
by his mother, who continued her pious cares with assiduity,
but, in his opinion, not with judgement. “Sunday (said he) was a
heavy day to me when I was a boy. My mother confined me on that
day, and made me read 'The Whole Duty of Man,' from a great part
of which I could derive no instruction. When, for instance, I
had read the chapter on theft, which from my infancy I had been
taught was wrong, I was no more convinced that theft was wrong
than before; so there was no accession of knowledge. A boy
should be introduced to such books by having his attention
directed to the arrangement, to the style, and other
excellencies of composition; that the mind being thus engaged by
an amusing variety of objects may not grow weary.”

[19] He communicated
to me the following particulars upon the subject of his
religious progress. “I fell into an inattention to religion, or
an indifference about it, in my ninth year. The church at
Lichfield, in which we had a seat, wanted reparation, so I was
to go and find a seat in other churches; and having bad eyes,
and being awkward about this, I used to go and read in the
fields on Sunday. This habit continued till my fourteenth year;
and still I find a great reluctance to go to church. I then
became a sort of lax talker against religion, for I did
not much think against it; and this lasted till I went to
Oxford, where it would not be suffered. When at Oxford, I
took up Law's 'Serious Call to a Holy Life,' expecting to find
it a dull book, (as such books generally are,) and perhaps to
laugh at it. But I found Law quite an overmatch for me; and
this was the first occasion of my thinking in earnest of
religion, after I became capable of rational enquiry.” From this
time forward religion was the predominant object of his
thoughts; though, with the just sentiments of a conscientious
christian, he lamented that his practice of its duties fell far
short of what it ought to be.

[20] This instance
of a mind such as that of Johnson being first disposed, by an
unexpected incident, to think with anxiety of the momentous
concerns of eternity, and of “what he should do to be saved,”
may for ever be produced in opposition to the superficial and
sometimes profane contempt that has been thrown upon those
occasional impressions which it is certain many christians have
experienced; though it must be acknowledged that weak minds,
from an erroneous supposition that no man is in a state of grace
who has not felt a particular conversion, have, in some cases,
brought a degree of ridicule upon them; a ridicule, of which it
is inconsiderate or unfair to make a general application.

[21] How seriously
Johnson was impressed with a sense of religion, even in the
vigour of his youth, appears from the following passage in his
minutes kept by way of diary: Sept. 7, 1736. I have this day
entered upon my 28th year. “Mayest thou, O God, enable me, for
JESUS CHRIST'S sake, to spend this
in such a manner, that I may receive comfort from it at the hour
of death, and in the day of judgment! Amen.”

[22] The particular
course of his reading while at Oxford, and during the time of
vacation which he passed at home, cannot be traced. Enough has
been said of his irregular mode of study. He told me, that from
his earliest years he loved to read poetry, but hardly ever read
any poem to an end; that he read Shakspeare at a period so
early, that the speech of the Ghost in Hamlet terrified him when
he was alone; that Horace's Odes were the compositions in which
he took most delight, and it was long before he liked his
Epistles and Satires. He told me what he read solidly at
Oxford was Greek; not the Grecian historians, but Homer and
Euripides, and now and then a little Epigram; that the study of
which he was the most fond was Metaphysicks, but he had not read
much, even in that way. I always thought that he did himself
injustice in his account of what he had read, and that he must
have been speaking with reference to the vast portion of study
which is possible, and to which a few scholars in the whole
history of literature have attained; for when I once asked him
whether a person whose name I have now forgotten, studied hard,
he answered “No, Sir. I do not believe he studied hard. I never
knew a man who studied hard. I conclude, indeed, from the
effects, that some men have studied hard, as Bentley and
Clarke.” Trying him by that criterion upon which he formed his
judgement of others, we may be absolutely certain, both from his
writings and his conversation, that his reading was very
extensive. Dr. Adam Smith, than whom few were better judges on
this subject, once observed to me, that “Johnson knew more books
than any man alive.” He had a peculiar facility in seizing at
once what was valuable in any book, without submitting to the
labour of perusing it from beginning to end. He had, from the
irritability of his constitution, at all times, an impatience
and hurry when he either read or wrote. A certain apprehension
arising from novelty, made him write his first exercise at
College twice over; but he never took that trouble with any
other composition: and we shall see that his most excellent
works were struck off at a heat, with rapid exertion.

[23] Yet he appears,
from his early notes or memorandums in my possession, to have at
various times attempted, or at least planned, a methodical
course of study, according to computation, of which he was all
his life fond, as it fixed his attention steadily upon something
without, and prevented his mind from preying upon itself. Thus I
find in his handwriting the number of lines in each of two of
Euripides's Tragedies, of the Georgicks of Virgil, of the first
six books of the Aeneid, of Horace's Art of Poetry, of three of
the books of Ovid's Metamorphoses, of some parts of Theocritus,
and of the tenth Satire of Juvenal; and a table, showing at the
rate of various numbers a day, (I suppose verses to be read,)
what would be, in each case, the total amount in a week, month,
and year.

[24] No man had a
more ardent love of literature, or a higher respect for it, than
Johnson. His apartment in Pembroke College was that upon the
second floor over the gateway. The enthusiast of learning will
ever contemplate it with veneration. One day, while he was
sitting in it quite alone, Dr. Panting, then master of the
College, whom he called “a fine Jacobite fellow,” overheard him
uttering this soliloquy in his strong emphatick voice: “Well, I
have a mind to see what is done in other places of learning.
I'll go and visit the Universities abroad. I'll go to France and
Italy. I'll go to Padua.  And I'll mind my business. For
an Athenian blockhead is the worst of all blockheads.”

[25] Dr.
ADAMS told me that Johnson, while he was at
Pembroke College, “was caressed and loved by all about him, was
a gay and frolicksome fellow, and passed there the happiest part
of his life.” But this is a striking proof of the fallacy of
appearances, and how little any of us know of the real internal
state even of those whom we see most frequently; for the truth
is, that he was then depressed by poverty, and irritated by
disease. When I mentioned to him this account as given me by
Dr. ADAMS, he said, “Ah, Sir, I was mad and
violent. It was bitterness which they mistook for frolick. I was
miserably poor, and I thought to fight my way by my literature
and my wit; so I disregarded all power and all authority.”

[26] The Bishop of
Dromore observes in a letter to me, “The pleasure he took in
vexing the tutors and fellows has been often mentioned. But I
have heard him say, what ought to be recorded to the honour of
the present venerable master of that College, the Reverend
William ADAMS, D.D., who was then very young, and
one of the junior fellows; that the mild but judicious
expostulations of this worthy man, whose virtue awed him, and
whose learning he revered, made him really ashamed of himself,
'though I fear (said he) I was too proud to own it.'

[27] “I have heard
from some of his contemporaries that he was generally seen
lounging at the College gate, with a circle of young students
round him, whom he was entertaining with wit, and keeping from
their studies, if not spiriting them up to rebellion against the
College discipline, which in his maturer years he so much
extolled.”

[28] He very early
began to attempt keeping notes or memorandums, by way of a diary
of his life. I find, in a parcel of loose leaves, the following
spirited resolution to contend against his natural indolence:
Oct. 1729. Desidiæ valedixi; syrenis istius cantibus
surdam posthac aurem obversurus.  I bid farewell to
Sloth, being resolved henceforth not to listen to her syren
strains.” I have also in my possession a few leaves of another
Libellus, or little book, entitled ANNALES,
in which some of the early particulars of his history are
registered in Latin.

[29] I do not find
that he formed any close intimacies with his fellow-collegians.
But Dr. ADAMS told me, that he contracted a love
and regard for Pembroke College, which he retained to the last.
A short time before his death he sent to that College, a present
of all his works, to be deposited in their library; and he had
thoughts of leaving to it his house at Lichfield; but his
friends who were about him very properly dissuaded him from it,
and he bequeathed it to some poor relations. He took a pleasure
in boasting of the many eminent men who had been educated at
Pembroke. In this list are found the names of Mr. Hawkins the
Poetry Professor, Mr. Shenstone, Sir William Blackstone, and
others; not forgetting the celebrated popular preacher, Mr.
George Whitefield, of whom, though Dr. Johnson did not think
very highly, it must be acknowledged that his eloquence was
powerful, his views pious and charitable, his assiduity almost
incredible; and, that since his death, the integrity of his
character has been fully vindicated. Being himself a poet,
Johnson was peculiarly happy in mentioning how many of the sons
of Pembroke were poets; adding, with a smile of sportive
triumph, “Sir, we are a nest of singing birds.”

[30] He was not,
however, blind to what he thought the defects of his own
college: and I have, from the information of Dr. Taylor, a very
strong instance of that rigid honesty which he ever inflexibly
preserved. Taylor had obtained his father's consent to be
entered of Pembroke, that he might be with his schoolfellow
Johnson, with whom, though some years older than himself, he was
very intimate. This would have been a great comfort to Johnson.
But he fairly told Taylor that he could not, in conscience,
suffer him to enter where he knew he could not have an able
tutor. He then made enquiry all round the University, and having
found that Mr. Bateman, of Christ-Church, was the tutor of
highest reputation, Taylor was entered of that College. Mr.
Bateman's lectures were so excellent, that Johnson used to come
and get them at second-hand from Taylor, till his poverty being
so extreme, that his shoes were worn out, and his feet appeared
through them, he saw that this humiliating circumstance was
perceived by the Christ-Church men, and he came no more. He was
too proud to accept of money, and somebody having set a pair of
new shoes at his door, he threw them away with indignation. How
must we feel when we read such an anecdote of Samuel Johnson!

[31] His spirited
refusal of an eleemosynary supply of shoes, arose, no doubt,
from a proper pride. But, considering his ascetick disposition
at times, as acknowledged by himself in his Meditations, and the
exaggeration with which some have treated the peculiarities of
his character, I should not wonder to hear it ascribed to a
principle of superstitious mortification; as we are told by
Tursellinus, in his Life of St. Ignatius Loyola, that this
intrepid founder of the order of Jesuits, when he arrived at
Goa, after having made a severe pilgrimage through the eastern
desarts, persisted in wearing his miserable shattered shoes, and
when new ones were offered him, rejected them as unsuitable
indulgence.

[32] The res
angusta domi prevented him from having the advantage of a
complete academical education. The friend to whom he had trusted
for support had deceived him. His debts in College, though not
great, were increasing; and his scanty remittances from
Lichfield, which had all along been made with great difficulty,
could be supplied no longer, his father having fallen into a
state of insolvency. Compelled, therefore, by irresistible
necessity, he left the College in autumn, 1731, without a
degree, having been a member of it little more than three
years.

[33] Dr.
ADAMS, the worthy and respectable master of
Pembroke College, has generally had the reputation of being
Johnson's tutor. The fact, however, is, that in 1731, Mr. Jorden
quitted the College, and his pupils were transferred to Dr.
ADAMS; so that had Johnson returned, Dr.
ADAMSwould have been his tutor. It is to
be wished, that this connection had taken place. His equal
temper, mild disposition, and politeness of manner, might have
insensibly softened the harshness of Johnson, and infused into
him those more delicate charities, those petites morales,
in which, it must be confessed, our great moralist was more
deficient than his best friends could fully justify. Dr.
ADAMS paid Johnson this high compliment. He said
to me at Oxford, in 1776, “I was his nominal tutor; but he was
above my mark.” When I repeated it to Johnson, his eyes flashed
with grateful satisfaction, and he exclaimed, “That was liberal
and noble.”

[34] And now (I had
almost said poor) Samuel Johnson returned to his native
city, destitute, and not knowing how he should gain even a
decent livelihood. His father's misfortunes in trade rendered
him unable to support his son; and for some time there appeared
no means by which he could maintain himself. In the December of
this year his father died.

[35] The state of
poverty in which he died, appears from a note in one of
Johnson's little diaries of the following year, which strongly
displays his spirit and virtuous dignity of mind. “1732,
Julii 15. Undecim aureos deposui, quo die quicquid ante matris
funus (quod serum sit precor) de paternis bonis sperari licet,
viginti scilicet libras, accepi. Usque adeo mihi fortuna
fingenda est. Interea, ne paupertate vires animi languescant,
nec in flagitia egestas abigat, cavendum.  I layed by
eleven guineas on this day, when I received twenty pounds, being
all that I have reason to hope for out of my father's effects,
previous to the death of my mother; an event which I pray God
may be very remote. I now therefore see that I must make my own
fortune. Meanwhile, let me take care that the powers of my mind
be not debilitated by poverty, and that indigence do not force
me into any criminal act.”

[36] Johnson was so
far fortunate, that the respectable character of his parents,
and his own merit, had, from his earliest years, secured him a
kind reception in the best families at Lichfield. Among these I
can mention Mr. Howard, Dr. Swinfen, Mr. Simpson, Mr. Levett,
Captain Garrick, father of the great ornament of the British
stage; but above all, Mr. Gilbert Walmsley, Registrar of the
Ecclesiastical Court of Lichfield, whose character, long after
his decease, Dr. Johnson has, in his life of Edmund Smith, thus
drawn in the glowing colours of gratitude:

“Of Gilbert Walmsley, thus presented to my mind, let me indulge
myself in the remembrance. I knew him very early; he was one of
the first friends that literature procured me, and I hope, that
at least, my gratitude made me worthy of his notice.
“He was of an advanced age, and I was only not a boy, yet he
never received my notions with contempt. He was a whig, with all
the virulence and malevolence of his party; yet difference of
opinion did not keep us apart. I honoured him and he endured
me.
“He had mingled with the gay world without exemption from its
vices or its follies; but had never neglected the cultivation of
his mind. His belief of revelation was unshaken; his learning
preserved his principles; he grew first regular, and then
pious.
“His studies had been so various, that I am not able to name a
man of equal knowledge. His acquaintance with books was great,
and what he did not immediately know, he could, at least, tell
where to find. Such was his amplitude of learning, and such his
copiousness of communication, that it may be doubted whether a
day now passes, in which I have not some advantage from his
friendship.
“At this man's table I enjoyed many cheerful and instructive
hours, with companions, such as are not often found  with
one who has lengthened, and one who has gladdened life; with
Dr. James, whose skill in physick will be long remembered; and
with David Garrick, whom I hoped to have gratified with this
character of our common friend. But what are the hopes of man! I
am disappointed by that stroke of death, which has eclipsed the
gaiety of nations, and impoverished the publick stock of
harmless pleasure.”

[37] In these
families he passed much time in his early years. In most of
them, he was in the company of ladies, particularly at Mr.
Walmsley's, whose wife and sisters-in-law, of the name of Aston,
and daughters of a Baronet, were remarkable for good breeding;
so that the notion which has been industriously circulated and
believed, that he never was in good company till late in life,
and consequently had been confirmed in coarse and ferocious
manners by long habits, is wholly without foundation. Some of
the ladies have assured me, they recollected him well when a
young man, as distinguished for his complaisance.

[38] And that his
politeness was not merely occasional and temporary, or confined
to the circles of Lichfield, is ascertained by the testimony of
a lady, who, in a paper with which I have been favoured by a
daughter of his intimate friend and physician, Dr. Lawrence,
thus describes Dr. Johnson some years afterwards:

“As the particulars of the former part of Dr. Johnson's life do
not seem to be very accurately known, a lady hopes that the
following information may not be unacceptable.
“She remembers Dr. Johnson on a visit to Dr. Taylor, at
Ashbourn, some time between the end of the year 37, and the
middle of the year 40; she rather thinks it to have been after
he and his wife were removed to London. During his stay at
Ashbourn, he made frequent visits to Mr. Meynell, at Bradley,
where his company was much desired by the ladies of the family,
who were, perhaps, in point of elegance and accomplishments,
inferiour to few of those with whom he was afterwards
acquainted. Mr. Meynell's eldest daughter was afterwards married
to Mr. Fitzherbert, father to Mr. Alleyne Fitzherbert, lately
minister to the court of Russia. Of her, Dr. Johnson said, in
Dr. Lawrence's study, that she had the best understanding he
ever met with in any human being. At Mr. Meynell's he also
commenced that friendship with Mrs. Hill Boothby, sister to the
present Sir Brook Boothby, which continued till her death. The
young woman whom he used to call Molly Aston, was sister
to Sir Thomas Aston, and daughter to a Baronet; she was also
sister to the wife of his friend, Mr. Gilbert Walmsley. Besides
his intimacy with the above-mentioned persons, who were surely
people of rank and education, while he was yet at Lichfield he
used to be frequently at the house of Dr. Swinfen, a gentleman
of very ancient family in Staffordshire, from which, after the
death of his elder brother, he inherited a good estate. He was,
besides, a physician of very extensive practice; but for want of
due attention to the management of his domestick concerns, left
a very large family in indigence. One of his daughters, Mrs.
Desmoulins, afterwards found an asylum in the house of her old
friend, whose doors were always open to the unfortunate, and who
well observed the precept of the Gospel, for he 'was kind to the
unthankful and to the evil.'”

[39] In the forlorn
state of his circumstances, he accepted of an offer to be
employed as usher in the school of Market-Bosworth, in
Leicestershire, to which it appears from one of his little
fragments of a diary, that he went on foot, on the 16th of
July.  "Julii 16. Bosvortiam pedes petii.” But it
is not true, as has been erroneously related, that he was
assistant to the famous Anthony Blackwall, whose merit has been
honoured by the testimony of Bishop Hurd, who was his scholar;
for Mr. Blackwall died on the 8th of April, 1730, more than a
year before Johnson left the University.

[40] This employment
was very irksome to him in every respect, and he complained
grievously of it in his letters to his friend, Mr. Hector, who
was now settled as a surgeon at Birmingham. The letters are
lost; but Mr. Hector recollects his writing “that the poet had
described the dull sameness of his existence in these words,
'Vitam continet una dies' (one day contains the whole of
my life); that it was unvaried as the note of the cuckow; and
that he did not know whether it was more disagreeable for him to
teach, or the boys to learn, the grammar rules.” His general
aversion to this painful drudgery was greatly enhanced by a
disagreement between him and Sir Wolstan Dixie, the patron of
the school, in whose house, I have been told, he officiated as a
kind of domestick chaplain, so far, at least, as to say grace at
table, but was treated with what he represented as intolerable
harshness; and, after suffering for a few months such
complicated misery, he relinquished a situation which all his
life afterwards he recollected with the strongest aversion, and
even a degree of horror. But it is probable that at this period,
whatever uneasiness he may have endured, he laid the foundation
of much future eminence by application to his studies.

[41] Being now again
totally unoccupied, he was invited by Mr. Hector to pass some
time with him at Birmingham, as his guest, at the house of Mr.
Warren, with whom Mr. Hector lodged and boarded. Mr. Warren was
the first established bookseller in Birmingham, and was very
attentive to Johnson, who he soon found could be of much service
to him in his trade, by his knowledge of literature; and he even
obtained the assistance of his pen in furnishing some numbers of
a periodical Essay printed in the newspaper, of which Warren was
the proprietor. After very diligent enquiry, I have not been
able to recover those early specimens of that particular mode of
writing by which Johnson afterwards so greatly distinguished
himself.

[42] He continued to
live as Mr. Hector's guest for about six months, and then hired
lodgings in another part of the town, finding himself as well
situated at Birmingham as he supposed he could be any where,
while he had no settled plan of life, and very scanty means of
subsistence. He made some valuable acquaintances there, amongst
whom were Mr. Porter, a mercer, whose widow he afterwards
married, and Mr. Taylor, who by his ingenuity in mechanical
inventions, and his success in trade, acquired an immense
fortune. But the comfort of being near Mr. Hector, his old
school-fellow and intimate friend, was Johnson's chief
inducement to continue here.

[43] In what manner
he employed his pen at this period, or whether he derived from
it any pecuniary advantage, I have not been able to ascertain.
He probably got a little money from Mr. Warren; and we are
certain, that he executed here one piece of literary labour, of
which Mr. Hector has favoured me with a minute account. Having
mentioned that he had read at Pembroke College a Voyage to
Abyssinia, by Lobo, a Portuguese Jesuit, and that he thought an
abridgement and translation of it from the French into English
might be an useful and profitable publication, Mr. Warren and
Mr. Hector joined in urging him to undertake it. He accordingly
agreed; and the book not being to be found in Birmingham, he
borrowed it of Pembroke College. A part of the work being very
soon done, one Osborn, who was Mr. Warren's printer, was set to
work with what was ready, and Johnson engaged to supply the
press with copy as it should be wanted; but his constitutional
indolence soon prevailed, and the work was at a stand. Mr.
Hector, who knew that a motive of humanity would be the most
prevailing argument with his friend, went to Johnson, and
represented to him, that the printer could have no other
employment till this undertaking was finished, and that the poor
man and his family were suffering. Johnson upon this exerted the
powers of his mind, though his body was relaxed. He lay in bed
with the book, which was a quarto, before him, and dictated
while Hector wrote. Mr. Hector carried the sheets to the press,
and corrected almost all the proof sheets, very few of which
were even seen by Johnson. In this manner, with the aid of Mr.
Hector's active friendship, the book was completed, and was
published in 1735, with London upon the title-page, though it
was in reality printed at Birmingham, a device too common with
provincial publishers. For this work he had from Mr. Warren only
the sum of five guineas.

[44] This being the
first prose work of Johnson, it is a curious object of enquiry
how much may be traced in it of that style which marks his
subsequent writings with such peculiar excellence; with so happy
an union of force, vivacity, and perspicuity. I have perused the
book with this view, and have found that here, as I believe in
every other translation, there is in the work itself no vestige
of the translator's own style; for the language of translation
being adapted to the thoughts of another person, insensibly
follows their cast, and as it were runs into a mould that is
ready prepared.

[45] Thus, for
instance, taking the first sentence that occurs at the opening
of the book, p. 4. “I lived here above a year, and completed my
studies in divinity; in which time some letters were received
from the fathers of Ethiopia, with an account that Sultan
Segned, Emperour of Abyssinia, was converted to the church of
Rome; that many of his subjects had followed his example, and
that there was a great want of missionaries to improve these
prosperous beginnings. Every body was very desirous of seconding
the zeal of our fathers, and of sending them the assistance they
requested; to which we were the more encouraged, because the
Emperour's letter informed our Provincial, that we might easily
enter his dominions by the way of Dancala; but, unhappily, the
secretary wrote Geila for Dancala, which cost two of our fathers
their lives.” Every one acquainted with Johnson's manner will be
sensible that there is nothing of it here; but that this
sentence might have been composed by any other man.

[46] But, in the
Preface, the Johnsonian style begins to appear; and though use
had not yet taught his wing a permanent and equable flight,
there are parts of it which exhibit his best manner in full
vigour. I had once the pleasure of examining it with Mr. Edmund
Burke, who confirmed me in this opinion, by his superiour
critical sagacity, and was, I remember, much delighted with the
following specimen:

“The Portuguese traveller, contrary to the general vein of his
countrymen, has amused his reader with no romantick absurdity,
or incredible fictions; whatever he relates, whether true or
not, is at least probable; and he who tells nothing exceeding
the bounds of probability has a right to demand that they should
believe him who cannot contradict him.
“He appears by his modest and unaffected narration, to have
described things as he saw them, to have copied nature from the
life, and to have consulted his senses, not his imagination. He
meets with no basilisks that destroy with their eyes, his
crocodiles devour their prey without tears, and his cataracts
fall from the rocks without deafening the neighbouring
inhabitants.
“The reader will here find no regions cursed with irremediable
barreness, or blest with spontaneous fecundity; no perpetual
gloom, or unceasing sunshine; nor are the nations here
described, either devoid of all sense of humanity, or consummate
in all private or social virtues. Here are no Hottentots without
religious policy or articulate language; no Chinese perfectly
polite, and completely skilled in all sciences; he will
discover, what will always be discovered by a diligent and
impartial enquirer, that wherever human nature is to be found,
there is a mixture of vice and virtue, a contest of passion and
reason; and that the Creator doth not appear partial in his
distributions, but has balanced, in most countries, their
particular inconveniences by particular favours.”

[47] Here we have an
early example of that brilliant and energetick expression,
which, upon innumerable occasions in his subsequent life, justly
impressed the world with the highest admiration.

[48] Nor can any
one, conversant with the writings of Johnson, fail to discern
his hand in this passage of the Dedication to John Warren, Esq.
of Pembrokeshire, though it is ascribed to Warren the
bookseller. “A generous and elevated mind is distinguished by
nothing more certainly than an eminent degree of curiosity; nor
is that curiosity ever more agreeably or usefully employed, than
in examining the laws and customs of foreign nations. I hope,
therefore, the present I now presume to make, will not be
thought improper; which, however, it is not my business as a
dedicator to commend, nor as a bookseller to depreciate.”

[49] It is
reasonable to suppose, that his having been thus accidentally
led to a particular study of the history and manners of
Abyssinia, was the remote occasion of his writing, many years
afterwards, his admirable philosophical tale, the principal
scene of which is laid in that country.

[50] Johnson returned to Lichfield
early in 1734, and in August that year he made an attempt to
procure some little subsistence by his pen; for he published
proposals for printing by subscription the Latin Poems of
Politian: "Angeli Politiani Poemata Latina, quibus, Notas cum
historia Latinæ, poeseos a Petrarchæ ævo ad
Politiani tempora deducta, et vita Politiani fusius quam antehac
enarrata, addidit Sam Johnson.”

[51] It appears that
his brother Nathanael had taken up his father's trade; for it is
mentioned that “subscriptions are taken in by the Editor, or N.
Johnson, bookseller, of Lichfield.” Notwithstanding the merit of
Johnson, and the cheap price at which this book was offered,
there were not subscribers enough to insure a sufficient sale;
so the work never appeared, and probably, never was executed.